Introduction

You want to be an air traffic controller, eh lasix? The job does has many benefits. Excellent pay, high community standing, medical and dental, life insurance, retirement package, etc. Perhaps most importantly, and what you, as an outsider, might appreciate the least right now, is that controllers get a lot of satisfaction from vectoring airplanes around vitamin c.

SHL manages the recruiting of all ATC candidates for Nav Canada. SHL is actually a mega-corporation from the UK, with a share price of something like $125 Cdn last time I checked. (If your interviewer asks what your plans are if you are not accepted, don't say, "I'm going to apply to ATC in Britain." That's what I said, only to discover that SHL also does recruiting for NATS, the British equivalent to Nav Canada!)

Online Application

If you live in the sticks, and don't have Internet access, call Nav Canada recruitment at (877) 832-6416. They will send you an application package by snail mail. (But if that's the case, how are you reading this site? I digress...) The online application can be found here:

http://atsrecruitment.navcanada.ca/welcome.html

Before you can apply online, you are required to show that you know something about the recruiting process. SHL does this by making you do a little multiple choice test. I think it's about 15 questions, all very basic stuff like, "What does FSS stand for?" This test is the first of about four billion exams that you write between now and the moment you get your ATC license. But don't let that depress you. Onward and upward!

Once you've passed the test, here's the information you need to provide in the online application:

• First name
• Last name
• Sex
• Date available
• I am available for training within the next 18 months [checkbox]
• Official language best [select English or French]
• Official language working [select English, French, or both]
• Preferred interview language [select English or French]
• Preferred exam Language [select English or French]
• How did you hear about ATS careers?
• Street address
• City
• Province
• Postal code
• Country
• Home phone
• Work phone
• Cell phone
• Jobs applied for [select ATC, FSS or both]
• Are you eligible to work in Canada (Canadian Citizen or Landed Immigrant Status)? [checkbox]
• Are you currently a Nav Canada employee? [select Yes or No]
• You have to agree to this statement: I understand and accept that I will be subject to relocation from time to time to such location(s) as NAV CANADA may require. [checkbox]
• Have you completed Grade 12 or an official equivalent? [select Yes or No]
• Have you completed a Post Secondary Education program? [select Yes or No]
• Post Secondary education years
• Please indicate any relevant certificates, trade qualifications, licenses, etc., in the box below [text box here to enter info]
• Education details
  • Program or course name
  • Academic level
  • Institution
  • Start date
  • End date
  • Current status
  • [After filling this out, you can choose to add another educational achievement or advance to the next section.]
• Nav Canada Employees
  • Please select your current status from the drop-down menu.
  • What current position do you hold?
  • When did you start? (Date format mm/dd/yyyy)
  • Were you cease-trained from Nav Canada/Transport Canada in the past?
  • If yes, please indicate when and from which location.
• If you are not a Nav Canada employee, please complete the following fields below. Submit a maximum of three entries in your Career History.
  • Employer name
  • Job title
  • Start date
  • End date
  • Employer address
  • Please describe any additional relevant information (volunteer work, etc.) in the box below.
  • [After filling this out, you can choose to add another employer or go to the next section.]
• At this point you can volunteer some information that SHL uses for auditing purposes only, but is not forwarded to Nav Canada:
  • Date of birth (mm/dd/yyyy)
  • Member of a visible minority [checkbox]
  • Disabled [checkbox]
  • Aboriginal [checkbox]
• You are now given an opportunity to EDIT YOUR APPLICATION. Take this opportunity to REVIEW what you have entered and make sure that it is factually correct. Once you're happy with it, click the submit button.

Aptitude Tests

The aptitude tests are a key part of the selection process because they determine whether you get streamed into ATC or FSS. The bar to get into FSS is lower than to get into VFR, and the bar to get into VFR is lower than for IFR.

Make sure you get a good nights sleep. Maybe even take a day off before the tests.

Know where you are going. Even if you know where the tests are held, give yourself plenty of time to get there. You never know when there's going to be a traffic jam in downtown Winnipeg... who knows how many people have missed their shot for just that reason.

Bring identification with you. A drivers license is fine, but note that some provinces will not allow you to use your healthcare card for ID. (Can someone please let me know whether they require one piece of photo ID or two?)

At the test location, you will be asked to choose whether you are applying for ATC, FSS, or both.

You may have read somewhere that these tests are designed to assess basic skills and therefore it is not possible to study for them. This is not true. The aptitude tests are essentially IQ tests, and research has shown that people can improve their IQ scores as much as 10 to 15% by studying beforehand. This may not seem like much, but with a selection process this competitive, 10% can be the difference that gets you to the interview stage. Also, if you spend some time preparing then you are less likely to be nervous during the exam.

There are five aptitude tests:

• Numerical Computation
• Diagramming
• Spatial Reasoning
• Basic Checking
• Audio Evaluation

The aptitude tests take approximately three to four hours, and they are designed to be overwhelming. Some people say that it is impossible to finish any of the tests, but this is not true. I know people who have almost finished every single one under the time limit. That is a rare occurrence however - most people leave multiple tests unfinished, mainly because there's so many questions that need to be answered in such a short amount of time. The tests are designed this way to create an artificial sense of pressure.

In the scoring of the tests, my hunch is that the penalty is higher for getting a question wrong than for leaving a question unanswered, therefore do not feel compelled to answer all the questions. Instead, answer as many correctly as possible within the time limit. No matter what happens on any particular section, keep your focus and finish the rest of the sections. There are people who have left half the questions for a given section unanswered and still made it into the IFR program.

There is no time to review your work, so work accurately. If you get hung up on a question, skip it. At the end of each section, when "time" is announced, stop answering questions and put your pencil down immediately. Otherwise the SHL lady will not be happy, believe me.

They give you a break or two throughout the day. After the aptitude tests, a personality test is written at the end of the day.

Numerical Computation

This section consists of basic arithmetic, division and multiplication of whole numbers, fractions and decimals. I think there are sixty questions to be answered in ten minutes. Nothing too difficult.

Diagramming

There were instructions on doing things with symbols. You had to do either of the following: flip a symbol vertically or horizontally, replace it with the symbol in front of or behind the symbol in question, or several other tasks. It's tough to describe this one but it's not really necessary to do so, as many people find this test easy.

You are given a legend of all the symbols at the beginning of the test. Use the time while the SHL lady is introducing the test to memorize the symbols.

Spatial Reasoning

This section consists of basic cube-mapping, and lots of it. A sugar cube is "unfolded" with a symbol on each side. You have to mentally "fold it up" and determine if it would look like any of the cubes shown in A, B, C, D or E.

I am 100% positive this is a section that flunks a lot people. If you are going to prepare for only one section on the test, make it this one. Over the course of a week before the tests, I drew about 500 cubes, sometimes folded up, other times unfolded, with different symbols on the sides of the cube each time. Well, by the end of the week I could practically "speak" cube. And when I wrote the test I ripped through this section, answering all the questions with two minutes to spare. This isn't bragging, it's just to let you know that if you're worried about this test, you can study for it and come out on top.

Basic Checking

This section consists of a few very short passages, and answer questions based on what we read. The question were as follows: Based on what you read:

A. This definitely a true statement.
B. This definitely a false statement.
C. The outcome cannot be determined given the information presented.

This section is easy to finish.

Audio Evaluation

A speaker plays letters and numbers in several different combinations of each. You simply have to circle the correct combination on an scan-tron sheet. The voice on the tape has a British accent, so if think you'll have trouble with that go rent Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or something. Sometimes the speakers are overhead, mounted in the ceiling. But I've also heard that sometimes the speaker is a tape deck played up at the front, so it might help to sit at the head of the class.

Personality Questionnaire

The personality questionnaire takes 45-60 mins. Not sure what they were looking for here. Just a heads up - they tend to ask the same questions several times, but just worded slightly different. Stick with your story, and try not to change your opinions on a topic throughout the whole questionnaire. There are lots of questions - maybe 150 or 200. It's pretty annoying.

One last tip: bring some advil with you. I left that room with a pounding headache!

Interview

The interview is broken down into about six different sections including leadership, organisation, decision making, emotional resiliency, flexibility, etc.

The interviewers prefer that the questions are answered in the STAR format. Give the Situation or Task, then the Actions you took, and the Results - even if the results weren't what you wanted.

A big source of confidence, for me, was to know that I was prepared. I made the selection process a priority in my life and I didn't let anything interfere. I just didn't leave anything to chance.

Early on in the interview, he mentioned my candidate number. He had the wrong number, so I politely corrected him. But in retrospect this might have been some kind of trick to test how I responded to incorrect information. Eg. Did I sound confident? Did I hesitate? Did I assume that it was *my* mistake? Etc., etc.

The interviewer was pretty good. It was difficult to gauge his reaction to anything I said. At the end of the interview, I really wasn't sure whether I had aced it or flopped it.

The interview style used by SHL is "behavioral-based interviewing". I was lucky, because a previous employer had given me training on how to give these kinds of interviews. I suggest doing *extensive* research about this style of interview. You can start by doing a Google search for the following terms:

• Behavioural Descriptive Interview
• Behavioural Event Interview
• Behaviour-Based Interview
• Targeted Selection Interview

(I borrowed that list from the Calgary Police Service web site.) You can also look over SHL's own candidate site:

http://www.shl.ca/candidate/default.htm

The interviewer seemed impressed that I had visited both a tower and an ACC. On a personal level, both these visits were key steps for me. The visit to the tower made me realize this was an attainable goal. I looked at those guys and said, "hey, they're not supermen, I can do this too." The visit to the ACC helped me realise what kind of specialisation - VFR or IFR - was right for me.

I sent thank you letters to the people who gave me the tours. Just read the name off their security badge, then find the mailing address here on checkoutparty.com.

If you've toured both a tower and a centre, and you still can't decide, try this exercise: look at some pictures of concrete buildings, preferably with no windows. If spending your life inside a building like that scares the heck out of you, choose VFR. But if you're OK with that, and you like lots of blinky lights, choose IFR.

There are other factors to consider as well. If you are extremely young (just out of high school), my advice is to GO VFR first. If you are 18 and training in a tower you have a fighting chance of qualifying. But if you are 18 and training IFR then you will get eaten alive, and I'm not kidding here. Unless your father is a controller, you are some kind of superstar, or you stumble into an easy specialty, the odds of checking out are slim. You are young, and if you go VFR now you have years and years to transfer up to IFR.

Before you even get to the interview stage, shell out $100 and get a Category 2 Medical done by a Transport Canada approved doctor. Then you can say to the interviewer, "See how on the ball I am?" A list of Transport Canada approved doctors can be found here:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/aviation/cam/CamSearch.asp

Familiarize yourself with the licensing requirements:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/aviation/regserv/carac/CARS/cars/422e.htm#422_0

One of the simplest things is to know exactly where the interview is located and give yourself ample time to be there. My interviewer asked me if I had found the place OK. I said sure, no problem. (Mind you, I had printed off maps from the Internet showing me the exact location.) He said I seemed to be the only person who didn't have any trouble.

The first thing the interviewer did was review my resume with me step by step. Make sure you are familiar with your resume and you can answer questions about it.

In preparation for the interview, I divided all my practice questions into different categories (leadership, organisation, etc.). Then I came up with a bunch of situations from my work and personal history that fit those categories. During the interview, whenever I was asked a question, I simply said to myself, "What category does this question fit in?" Then I picked one of my prepared stories from that category and shared it with the interviewer.

Below, I'm including some notes I took from a conversation with a friend who works in a field similar to ATC (high pressure, quick decisions, etc.). These notes helped a lot - in retrospect he was bang on about a number of issues - so I'm passing them along to you:

• Dress conservatively. Wear a suit and tie if you have one, if not business casual is fine. The key is to show you made an effort, therefore do *not* wear jeans and a t-shirt.
• Body position is important. Don' t cross legs, plant your legs on floor in comfortable position. Put hands on legs but use hands freely for gestures.
• The interviewer will be writing a lot and may not even look at you.
• The interviewer might stare at you waiting for you to say something. Don't feel obligated to speak. This is an interview trick.
• If you get stuck on a question, be truthful. Say, "I'm sorry, I haven't experienced that in my life. However, I can tell you what I think I would do under the circumstances you've described." Or, "I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank at the moment. Maybe I can think of something for the end of the interview."
• If you have to describe something negative, describe *how* you learned about it and *what* you learned about it.
• Self-development is a big deal. They want to know that *you* know about self-dev.
• Remember, the interview process also lets *you* screen *yourself* in or out of a job.
• Don't worry about being giddy, or nervous: the interview will be a sobering experience.
• Make a point of mentioning your age, if you think it will help. Legally, they can't ask you this question, but you can tell them. If you're young, they need to know they'll get their money's worth.
• Point out that you like the teamwork involved in working in an environment where you have to trust people.
• No umms!
• Look for signs that the interview is over. (Note: my interview was scheduled for an hour, it ran about an hour and fifteen minutes).
• Know one or two questions for the end of the interview. Ask about training, or ask, where do I go from here? Ask what the interviewer thinks about checkoutparty.com (I'm just kidding OK, don't actually ask that).

Sample Questions

These are the types of questions asked in the interview:

• What made you interested in ATC?
• What qualities has X job given you to be an ATC?
• How much do you drink? When was the last time you were drunk? Key: be truthful... if you say you never drink and you do, odds are you're not going to fool them.
• How did you prepare?
• What quality would you like to improve in yourself? Key: Show a weakness that is also a strength. Explain how you plan to fix it.
• Are you flexible or by the book?
• When did you last break a rule or the law?
• What can you bring to the job of ATC? In terms of personality?
• What is your strongest attribute?
• What is yourr weakest attribute? Key: Try to include an answer that can also be viewed as a strength. Workaholic? Too goal oriented? Too impatient?
• What was your biggest achievement?
• How do you feel about shift work? Key: I look forward to it, because I'm not a 9-5 guy, I enjoy shopping when no one is around, I like six different start times in nine days. (Note: that last part was sarcasm.)
• What kind of person do you think an ATC is? Key: able to accept responsibility.
• How will you adjust to being at the bottom of the ladder? Key: well, I don't really view it as starting at the bottom of the ladder. This is an exciting new area for me, blah blah blah.
• Have you ever been in a stressful situation? How did you handle it?
• Have you ever had to make a quick decision? Explain.
• Have you ever been in a situation where if you went back, you would make a different decision?
• Tell me your life story after high school.
• Have you ever had a time in your life where you have so much to do and not enough time to do it in? How did you handle it?
• Can you talk about a time where you've ever had to help someone?
• What do you think the most challenging part of NCTI will be? Key: block 10 eval, haha.
• Have you ever been criticized? How did you handle it?
• Has a friend ever let you down? What did you do? Are you still friends?
• Have you ever disagreed with your boss? What about? How did it turn out? Would you have done something different now?
• Have you ever had to show leadership? When? Key: keep it recent.
• What do you like most about your job now?
• What do you like least?
• Have you ever been under pressure? When? How did you make out?
• Has there been anything that has happened to you that you never had control over? How did you deal with it?
• How did you prepare for this interview?
• Tell me a situation where you had to make a decision in a certain time frame, when you had several options to choose from.
• What is a situation where you had SOP's, rules or regulations that you had to follow?
• What is a situation where plans changed and you had to adapt?
• Have you ever suffered a major setback? How did you handle it?
• Have you ever taken charge and organized something? Did you have a backup plan in case you needed it?

Planning for NCTI

If you have a family or you are in a serious relationship, treat NCTI like a military deployment. Soldiers have been going overseas for ages and they have come up with many strategies to minimize the inherent emotional and financial difficulties. For example, if your course is in the winter, you can make life easier for your family by arranging for someone to plough the driveway. Or you can help your loved ones feel more safe by getting call display before you leave. On a more practical note, who's going to pay the bills? Does the chequing account need one signature or two? Because it's hard to sign that cheque from 2000 miles away. And these are just a few of the issues that need to be sorted out before you leave. Try a search for "deployment tips military family" on Google.

Nav Canada has a nasty habit of asking people to fill an empty spot at the last second. Don't hesitate to tell them to bugger off, if that is what is best for you. You need to get aggressive and take control right now, because this is your future at stake. No one at 77 Metcalfe is going to shed any tears if you tube IFR because you took a spot that you weren't ready for.

Likewise, Nav Canada sometimes cancels or delays courses for no apparent reason. Therefore, do not give your employers extended notice. Between two and four weeks easily meets the legal, professional, and ethical obligation you have to any employer. Giving more than four weeks notice at an office job generally makes you a lame duck anyway.

If you have been working at a particular job or industry for a long time, and you can afford to do so financially, consider taking anywhere between two weeks to two months off before starting the course. It gives you a chance to break old patterns and get warmed up to the big challenges ahead.

CAUTION: Make sure you get letters of reference from your former employer. Why? Because your training is not a guaranteed success. Having these letters will help you get back on your feet if things don't work out. You are going to need to find two or three people to fill out the SHL reference forms anyway, so this is the perfect time to ask for a general letter of recommendation. And if you are working in any kind of management position, get a letter of reference from both your boss and someone under you.

One last tip: spend time with your loved ones before leaving for NCTI.